Dino Rizzo Lawsuit: Eagan Harassment and Weems Conspiracy Claims

Dino Rizzo, executive director of the Association of Related Churches (ARC) and an associate pastor at Church of the Highlands, has been named as a defendant in two federal lawsuits: a 2021 sexual harassment suit brought by a former unpaid intern at a Mississippi church, and a 2023 conspiracy suit brought by the founders of a Florida megachurch. Both were dismissed. The conspiracy case is currently on appeal to the Eleventh Circuit.

Who Dino Rizzo Is in These Cases

Rizzo co-founded Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge in 1993 and later helped build ARC into a church-planting organization that has launched nearly a thousand churches across the country. Since 2013 he has served as an associate pastor at Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, Alabama, under senior pastor Chris Hodges, while continuing to lead ARC.¹ In both lawsuits, plaintiffs sued him in connection with those roles rather than for his personal conduct.

The Eagan Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

On September 30, 2021, Laura Ashley Eagan, a former unpaid intern at Vibrant Church in Columbus, Mississippi, filed a federal lawsuit against the church, its former lead pastor Jason Delgado, two of Delgado’s parents who worked at the church, and Rizzo.²

Eagan alleged that Jason Delgado sent her unwanted, sexually explicit messages and propositioned her from early 2020 through the end of that year. Her supervisor had referred her to Delgado for “mentoring,” and the complaint claimed Delgado used his roles as her pastor and employer to “fulfill his sexual perversions.”³

What the Suit Alleged About Rizzo

Rizzo was named in his capacity as ARC’s executive director and as an “overseer” of Vibrant Church, which was an ARC member church. Eagan alleged she reported the harassment to Rizzo, who investigated the claims but “did nothing to intervene.”³ The complaint further asserted that church officials had known about Delgado’s predatory behavior toward others as far back as 2016 and failed to act.²

ARC’s response was that it has “no legal, governmental or corporate oversight or control” over its member churches, and on its website describes ARC-planted churches as “legally autonomous, independently led, separately operated, and solely accountable to their leadership.”⁴⁵

How the Case Was Resolved

On September 20, 2022, U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers dismissed the Title VII claim with prejudice. He ruled that Eagan did not qualify as an “employee” under federal law because she was an unpaid intern, and that Vibrant Church did not meet the statutory definition of an employer, which requires at least 15 employees for 20 or more weeks per year. The judge noted that some remaining claims, including negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and fraud, could potentially be pursued in state court.⁴

Delgado resigned from Vibrant Church in April 2021 after the allegations became public. At least one other former employee filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and an attorney representing multiple women said he believed there were additional victims.⁶ No criminal charges against Delgado have been reported.

The Weems Conspiracy Lawsuit

On July 12, 2023, Stovall and Kerri Weems, the founders of Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Florida, filed a federal lawsuit in the Middle District of Florida against ARC, Chris Hodges, Rizzo, and John Siebeling of The Life Church in Memphis. The complaint alleged a “continuing unlawful conspiracy” to engineer a takeover of Celebration Church and destroy the Weemses’ reputations.⁷

The Weemses launched Celebration in 1998. Rizzo and Siebeling both served on the church’s board of overseers until they stepped down in September 2021. Celebration was not an ARC-planted church but had historically donated $150,000 to $200,000 per year to the organization.⁸

The Allegations

According to the complaint, the conflict began when Stovall Weems shifted his focus toward missionary work and proposed limiting the church’s contributions to ARC unless the funds went directly to ministry rather than the organization’s “corporate” growth systems. The Weemses alleged that ARC pressured them to commit 2% of the church’s annual income to ARC, and that when Weems refused in 2018, the defendants began conspiring to replace him with a leader they could control.⁹

The complaint alleged extortion, bribery, wire fraud, computer crimes, and psychological abuse, seeking damages in excess of $100 million. The Weemses pointed to a January 17, 2022 email from Larry Stockstill, an overseer and “Apostolic Elder” of Church of the Highlands, that reportedly told Stovall Weems he was under financial investigation, was banned from church property, no longer held a “founder’s seat,” and would need to apologize to ARC, Rizzo, and Siebeling to “clear his name.” The Weemses also alleged that the defendants built a $4.5 million retreat center as a direct competitor to the Weemses’ Honey Lake Farms Lodge, and that Rizzo and Siebeling stepped down from Celebration’s oversight board around the time the competing facility was announced.⁹

The Church’s Response

Celebration’s trustees suspended Stovall Weems in early 2022 amid accusations of financial irregularities. A church-commissioned investigation accused Weems of “committing fraud” and “unjustly enriching himself at the expense of the church,” and characterized him as too “mentally unstable to lead.”¹⁰⁹ Weems resigned in April 2022. The Weemses’ lawsuit characterized that internal report as a manufactured tool of the conspiracy. ARC denied the allegations entirely, calling them “unfounded and inaccurate.”⁷

Dismissal and Pending Appeal

On February 9, 2024, Judge Marcia Morales Howard struck the original complaint as a “shotgun pleading” that lacked enough detail to determine whether the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine applied. She gave the Weemses until March 1, 2024 to file an amended complaint.¹¹

After reviewing the amended complaint, Judge Howard dismissed the case on December 19, 2024, ruling that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction under the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine. She concluded that determining whether the investigation into Weems was a “sham” orchestrated by the defendants or based on “legitimate concerns regarding his fitness for the pastoral ministry” would require the court to wade into questions of church doctrine and governance that the First Amendment places off limits. The dismissal was without prejudice.¹⁰

The Weemses filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on January 17, 2025. In their July 2025 appellate brief, they argue that their claims are based on secular business disputes governed by Florida corporate law rather than religious matters. The appeal remained active as of mid-2025.¹²

A Related Allegation That Did Not Become a Lawsuit Against Rizzo

Rizzo’s name has also surfaced in reporting on sexual assault allegations against Micahn Carter, a former pastor at Together Church in Yakima, Washington. Laurie Jones, the mother of Carter’s accuser, told the Roys Report that on May 4, 2019, five days after her daughter said Carter raped her, she informed Rizzo of the allegation. Rizzo did not respond to the Roys Report’s requests for comment. No lawsuit has been filed against Rizzo over his handling of that information; his name comes up because Carter later preached at Church of the Highlands in 2020 as part of a “ministerial restoration process,” and reporting has questioned the church’s account of when it first learned of the rape allegation.¹³

The Oversight Question That Runs Through Both Cases

A common thread in the litigation is whether Rizzo and ARC bear legal responsibility for what happens inside affiliated churches. ARC describes itself as a resource and training organization, not a denomination, and states on its website that it “has no authority to address any situation in a local church” and that church planters are employees of their individual churches, not of ARC.⁵ That framing worked as a defense in the Eagan case, where ARC’s position that it had no control over Vibrant Church helped undermine the argument that Rizzo was obligated to intervene as an overseer.⁴

The complaints described a more hands-on picture. Eagan alleged that Rizzo personally investigated harassment reports at Vibrant. The Weemses alleged that Rizzo sat on Celebration’s board of overseers and that ARC pressured the church over its financial contributions. Whether that gap between ARC’s stated autonomy structure and the influence its leaders exercise in practice can be tested in court is the question the pending Eleventh Circuit appeal may address.

1
AL.com. After Inappropriate Relationship, Former Healing Place Church Pastor Dino Rizzo Joins Church of the Highlands
2
AL.com. Church of the Highlands Associate Pastor Named as Defendant in Workplace Sexual Harassment Lawsuit
3
The Christian Post. Church of the Highlands Pastor Named in Sexual Harassment Lawsuit
4
MinistryWatch. Lawsuit Against Alabama Megachurch Pastor Dropped
5
ARC Churches. Our Structure
6
The Commercial Dispatch. Vibrant Minister Accused of Sexual Harassment
7
AL.com. Church of the Highlands Pastors Engineered Takeover of Florida Church, Lawsuit Alleges
8
Charisma. Federal Complaint Makes Conspiracy Claims Against Large Church Planting Group
9
The Christian Post. Stovall Weems Sues Chris Hodges, Dino Rizzo
10
Jacksonville.com. Judge Tosses Suit by Celebration Church Founders Stovall and Kerri Weems
11
Justia. Weems et al v. Association of Related Churches et al
12
MinistryWatch. Stovall and Kerri Weems Litigations, Accusations, Dismissals, Appeals
13
The Roys Report. Former Megachurch Pastor Sues Woman, Claims Raped Her